It’s a brutal business: On horse farms in South America, mares are held for one purpose only: to take blood from them. For in the blood of pregnant mares is the hormone PMSG – a popular drug in this country for pig breeding. For years, the grievances are denounced. But almost nothing has changed.

What is the hormone PMSG used for?

In Europe, PMSG ( Pregnant Mare Serum Gonadotropin) is used to synchronize piglet production. This is mainly used in industrial mass production. One wants to prove the mother sows at the same time.

The so-called insemination engineers of the agricultural industry then only need to come once.
Then all are inseminated at the same time and all get their piglets at the same time within a few hours.

That is, you can calculate the exact day and hours. Of course this makes the handling of the production very easy. The piglets can be exhibited at the same time, be fattened and thus slaughtered at the same time. The perfect way to clock the whole production.

On August 28, 2018, ARD magazine FAKT in Germany has repeatedly reported on the conditions on such “blood farms”.

Systematic torment – shock report

York Ditfurth, board member of the Animal Welfare Foundation, has been fighting for years against the scandalous blood farms in Uruguay. In Europe, the mare’s hormone has been used in pig breeding for 30 years.

The current video footage has made York Ditfurth turn at high risk. After the release of the first images in 2015, the South American “blood farms” had made various promises to improve conditions. So workers should be exchanged and a more animal-friendly handling of the horses be prescribed.

The current recordings show even more catastrophic abuses. They prove that the misery of the mares in South America has not improved. Animal rights activist York Ditfurtis shocked by the scale.
The animal cruelty had never been so detailed in detail.

The hormone is obtained from the blood of pregnant mares on so-called blood farms in South America. The searches of the organization were in Uruguay and Argentina.There are also blood farms in Chile. They were on blood farms in Uruguay and got a picture of themselves.

What exactly happens there?

Basically, the mares have to be pregnant to produce the hormone PMSG at all. They are kept in huge areas under the most adverse circumstances, because the worse the condition of the animals, the more hormone PMSG they produce.

To take blood samples, the pregnant animals are loaded into trucks by Gauchos and brought to these blood farms. There they are driven through a narrow corridor in head boxes. The animals are stunned with a wooden beating and finally they are taken with a blood cannula about ten liters of blood – that is about a quarter of their total blood volume. The mares have to undergo this procedure once or twice a week. That’s why they are barely older than a maximum of six years. About 30 percent of the mares die each year either directly from the consequences of the blood collection or they end up in a slaughterhouse, because they no longer pregnant.

For 100 grams PMSG be paid around the 850,000 euros.That is a lot of money. If one calculates the cheap acquisition costs and maintenance costs for a mare, money is printed with the blood. From two and a half liters of blood, two milligrams of PMSG are recovered. At least ten liters are tapped from the mares a week. Eleven weeks long. That’s more than 110 liters of blood in one season. PMSG is eventually sold to Europe.

Since the mares only produce the coveted hormone until the 130th day of gestation, the foals are aborted manually as waste because they are not needed.Abortion is also extremely painful for the animals: For example, workers simply scratch the uterus of the horses with their hands. The animals are left to themselves and brought back to the pastures. Veterinary care does not exist.
Way too expensive.

“The condition has become more brutal for the horses. The tortures are as systematic as they used to be, but much harder … The worker sticks a bamboo stick in the genitals to give a painful impulse so that the mare can go forward so that her blood can be taken off. That’s brute force”.York Ditfurth, Animal Welfare Foundation

Why can not anything be done against PMSG trading from a legal perspective? Because PMSG has been an approved drug for 30 years.
Here are the interests of pig breeders and veterinarians who say that PMSG has been proven for 30 years and thus earn a lot of money, against animal welfare.

The medical preparations made from this primitive torture are also distributed in Germany.

Largest PMSG Distributors: IDT Biologics from Dessau, Germany!

According to the report of the state television magazine FAKT, the company IDTannounced that in the future the active substance PMSG would only be sourced from European horse husbandry.
Thus, the largest distributor of the drug in Germany apparently no longer wants to buy in South America.
A success, but the animal cruelty is still not finished. There is another company that still sells PMSG products from the “blood farms” in Germany.

My comment: Guidelines of the OIE and the EU Commissionexist only for the meat production, but not for the production of an animal by-product, among which the blood serum falls. The customers of PMSG, including European pharmaceutical companies, have so far shown no interest in introducing binding legislation. Because they also benefit from this loophole, and from the dirty business with the life and suffering of the animals, as always.

And so continues the dirty business of suffering and dying mares and foals in the blood farms.

I think that would as well work with the blood of tortured pharmaceutical entrepreneurs who have something to answer, right?